For good or ill, you’ve broken into the mainstream when you appear in the Washington Post. Shatter has cracked the East Coast, and it scares the hell of of them there as does pot in general. The potent concentrate is now appearing on law enforcement radar.

Shatter is a form of marijuana wax, derived from butane hash oil and some forms of shatter reportedly have as much as 90 percent THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. That is about five times the potency of unrefined smoked cannabis and more powerful than standard hash oil. It is produced as a thin, hard translucent layer similar to glass, which can shatter if dropped, hence the name.

The cannabis extract is legal for recreational use in states such as Colorado and Washington, and sold in medical marijuana dispensaries in other states like California, which was its birthplace. It is faster-acting and far more easily concealed than marijuana which concerns LEOs.

Recently Loudoun County sheriff’s deputies intercepted a truck that had about $900,000 worth of packaged marijuana near Dulles International Airport. Included in that load was 15 pounds of shatter, in total packaged weight. As it retails for about $60 a gram in Colorado, so 10 pounds of shatter would be worth nearly $270,000. Black-market shatter probably would cost much more.*

Although the high potency of shatter is troubling to parents and law enforcement officials, marijuana advocates point out that no one has died from ingesting marijuana. “As long as people are educated about the proper dosage,” said Morgan Fox of the Marijuana Policy Project, “it hasn’t presented any problem.” He likened the difference between shatter and regular marijuana to the difference between whiskey and beer.

Ry Prichard, a writer and photographer for the Denver Post’s Cannabist blog, noted, “Shatter and other concentrated cannabis products give a stronger, more immediate effect and have shown to have great benefits with a variety of medical conditions because of the quick-acting nature of inhalation or vaporization.”

He noted that more than half of the daily sales for dispensaries in Colorado come from concentrates, primarily in edible cannabis products.

Also troubling to authorities is the specter of amateurs attempting to make their own shatter, a process that involves flammable butane gas.

Fox said legalizing and regulating marijuana was the way to protect homes from hash oil extraction fires, “so businesses are doing it, instead of people making it themselves.”

Prince George’s County police have only recently seen shatter for the first time, seizing 90 grams in October, spokeswoman Julie Parker said. Montgomery County and Fairfax County police said they were aware that it was available locally but could not quantify how often they had encountered it. D.C. police said they had not encountered shatter.

The Drug Enforcement Administration, in its 2015 National Drug Threat Assessment, said that marijuana concentrates are growing in popularity and that its ease of use through portable vaporizers presented new challenges to law enforcement. Michael Shavers, a DEA spokesman, noted that extraction labs’ use of flammable gases posed dangers dramatized by occasional explosions, and that shatter’s size and weight made it easy to transport nationwide. “The fact that it’s available around the country is a concern for law enforcement,” Shavers said.

*- For those who are sharp-eyed, you may wonder why, if 15 pounds were seized, did the copper use a figure of 10 pounds to do the estimate? Per a conversation in the early 70s with an FBI agent, he volunteered that for every 10 pounds of pot caught, nine pounds were reported. Anyone who has seen the disgusting video of the Santa Ana clinic bust where NORML Prez Marla is dissed by police officers because of her being disabled, as in making fun of a cripple kid, you can guess where the 5 pounds went in the Loudoun County sheriff’s estimate.

Also as we here in the black market know, all pot is cheaper without government regulation, interference, and taxation, but somehow the non-cannabis establishment seems to think all pot people are as greedy as themselves. Is there any wonder why they killed Jesus? They didn’t do it for your sins. They did it for theirs!